Two street vendors and attorneys from the Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign also delivered a “citizen’s citation” issued to police Chief Charlie Beck that lists violations such as verbal harassment, intimidation and confiscation of street vendor property.

“And our work — our families totally depend on what we’re doing,” Garcia, who sells Jalisco-style food, said through a translator.

Garcia added that street vendors “want legalization so that we can go to work with peace and tranquility, and so that we can also contribute to the city, with the corresponding … payments, like taxes.”

The group asked that the citation be delivered to Beck, who they hope will enact a citywide ban on issuing citations to street vendors, similar to an agreement made with a Rampart Division captain for the MacArthur Park area.

Under the agreement, MacArthur Park vendors are allowed to operate without being cited, as long as they do not block access on sidewalks and business entrances, and do not sell pirated or illegal goods, the vendors said.

“We’d like this (agreement) all over the city of L.A.,” National Lawyers Guild attorney Cynthia Anderson-Barker said on behalf of the vendors.

The Rampart Division agreement was reached about three weeks ago, according to Juan Rodriguez, an organizer who worked with the MacArthur Park vendors.

Smith responded that he “echoes” the Rampart Division captain in requiring that sidewalks and entrances be kept clear and no pirated goods be sold, but “beyond that, we’ve met several times” with National Lawyers Guild members and other groups to come to “some type of resolution, so that we can all work together, you can make money and make a fair living in Los Angeles.”

Beck, responding to a question about whether he would support the citywide moratorium requested by the group, told reporters that the department is awaiting instruction from City Council on the issue of street vending.

“That’s up to the council,” Beck said. “We will abide by the council’s actions on this just as we do now.”

The City Council’s Economic Development Committee is debating the issue and a task force has been meeting regularly to craft the proposed street vendor permitting program.

In the meantime, protesters said they want a halt to harassment by police.

“We’re here today to demand that LAPD stop its continual harassment of street vendors in the city of Los Angeles,” said Xiomara Corpeno, a director of community education at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

“We are at the cusp of passing a resolution to finally legalize street vending, yet they continue to harass street vendors, giving them tickets that actually don’t have to do with vending sometimes, threatening them and making their ability to make a living almost impossible,” she said.

Police officers have been known to follow vendors home, fail to document items they confiscate and allow health officials to toss food items into the garbage, according to the activists.

Anderson-Barker, who accompanied the street vendors to deliver the citation, said she planned to meet with City Attorney Mike Feuer Wednesday to talk about cases their group documented of street vendor harassment by the LAPD.

She said “enforcement abuses” were documented during legal clinics held by the lawyers guild, adding that recent cases involving confiscation of property belonging to homeless people on Skid Row could also apply to street vendors.

“Our push-back on the LAPD is if you’re going take this property you have to document it, give people receipts and give them a way to give it back,” Anderson-Barker said.

“I think the LAPD … realize there’s no way they can enforce the street vending municipal code fairly and legally,” Anderson-Barker said.

“They don’t have the resources. I think today they will consider doing what the Rampart (captain) has told us he’ll do.

The City Council’s Economic Development Committee Tuesday withheld its support for a permitting program for mobile sidewalk vendors, with several members saying the proposal was not fully developed and calling for more study on how such a program would work.

The proposal to legalize the sale of food and wares on sidewalks and public parks is being championed by Councilmen Curren Price and Jose Huizar, who is up for re-election in March.

The committee meeting was preceded by a rally and news conference organized by the Los Angeles Street Vendors Campaign, in which vendors and speakers from the 55-member coalition prematurely called it an “historic” day in anticipation that the panel would greenlight the proposal and send it on to the full council.

Huizar and Price’s committee colleagues decided otherwise. Councilman Paul Koretz said near the end of the two-hour-plus meeting, “I wouldn’t want our vote to do anything to imply that I was moving a program forward.”

Koretz, along with Councilmen Paul Krekorian and Gil Cedillo, noted the thinness of a city report on the permitting proposal and said they felt as though they were being asked to support a program before key questions were answered.

The council members said the report was short on details about the number of permits that would be available, the types of food or wares that could be sold, where vending could take place, permit fee amounts and whether there would be enough funding to enforce the regulation, among other issues.

“What I have before me is seven pages of a report that doesn’t really even weigh some of the fundamental policy decisions we’re going to have to make as a council,” Krekorian said.

Cedillo summed up the situation by saying, “This is not cooked yet.”

Huizar expressed bewilderment at the pushback from some business groups and fellow council members who criticized the lack of detail in the report, saying at least two meetings were held in recent months to obtain feedback from the public.

“This motion was introduced a year ago, and I thought we would be much further ahead in understanding what this means,” he said.

Some groups, representing businesses and neighborhood councils, urged the panel to consider allowing the permitting program in some areas, but not in others, depending on the individual needs and characteristics of each neighborhood.

But groups that have been pushing for legalization of street vending said they want the program applied citywide.

Maria Cabildo, director of the East Los Angeles Community Corporation, told the committee that vendors have been “waiting for this for a very long time.”

She said past attempts to permit street vending in MacArthur Park set up an uneven playing field for vendors, “so we really need a policy to be citywide, not just particular designated areas, for this policy to be effective.”

John Howland of the Central City Association, which represents downtown businesses, said “a one-size-fits-all model doesn’t work in the city, and each neighborhood should have an opportunity to weigh in.”

There are an estimated 10,000 food vendors and 40,000 non-food vendors doing business in Los Angeles on sidewalks and in parks, according to city officials.

The report presented to the Economic Development Committee describes an organizational chart of what agencies would take part in the permitting program. Food vendors would need to obtain permits from the Department of Public Health, and the Los Angeles Police Department would play an enforcement role, city officials said.

The Economic and Workforce Development Department, the Recreation and Parks Department and the Bureau of Street Services would handle the permitting process under the current framework.

Supporters of legalizing street vending say it would open up entrepreneurial opportunities to low-income people and legitimize an already thriving street food culture in Los Angeles, while critics of the business model worry it would create a public nuisance and unsanitary conditions related to food sales.

The proposal has drawn mixed reaction from neighborhood groups. The Studio City Neighborhood Council officially opposes the idea, while the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council, the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council and the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council have come out in support of legalized, regulated street vending.

The Mar Vista Community Council expressed “deep concerns” about the proposed permitting system and asked that before street vending is legalized, issues such as liability, sanitation, noise, odors and trash be addressed.

The Central City East Association asked that street vending not be allowed in the Skid Row area in downtown Los Angeles. The group’s executive director, Raquel Beard, wrote in a letter to the City Council that “this area is already plagued with a mixed bag of public safety issues, (and) the last

thing it needs to add to the equation is street vending.”

Some concerns were raised that street vendors would be more prone to extortion by gang members, but LAPD officials said brick-and-mortar shops could also be affected, noting the best way to combat that type of crime is to report it to authorities.

Holding a stack of tickets for illegal street vending, Rosa Calderon stood with a group of about 100 street vendors inside Los Angeles City Hall Tuesday—confident a city council committee was about to move forward a measure to allow them to go about their business legally.

They said they are tired of being chased by the police when they are “just working to support their families and themselves.”

Their hopes were temporarily dashed when the City Council’s Economic Development Committee decided to delay action on a street vending permitting process championed by Councilmen Jose Huizar (CD-14) and Curren Price Jr. (CD-9).

There is an estimated 50,000 street vendors in the city, but according to Huizar spokesman Rick Coca, the exact number is hard to come by because the industry is unregulated. Because street vending is currently banned, sellers are unable to pay for a business license or get a health permit, and are subject to fines if caught.

Rosa Calderon, 85, has received multiple tickets for selling waters and sodas on the street, however, she’s back to selling because she said she doesn’t have another job. (EGP photo by Jacqueline Garcia)

Many street vendors are undocumented, elderly or unemployed and according to street vending advocates, they have no other options for making the money they need to live.

This is the case for 85-year old Calderon, who told EGP she has been selling sodas and bottled water in downtown Los Angeles ever since losing her housekeeping job six years ago. She says her undocumented status and advanced age have made it impossible for her to find another job.

Holding five tickets, some issued by the same police officer and each carrying a $300 or so fine, Calderon said she can’t afford to pay the tickets and has been doing community service to try to reduce the debt. She said street vending is her only option for paying her rent and her food. It’s a financial necessity, say street vending allies.

Huizar told EGP that people like Calderon are part of a $400 million underground economy, “that the city does not know about or see.”

“We want to be able to bring it into the light because it benefits everybody,” he said.

Sixty-five-year-old Jose Moreno sells raspados (shaved ice) and elotes (corn on the cob) in the San Fernando Valley. He said vendors like him aren’t hurting anyone. “What we sell is not illegal, we are not hiding our stuff,” he said. But “when [the police] confiscate our merchandise they leave us with nothing,” he said. He said he felt helpless when police took away his cart with about $400 of merchandise. “They don’t understand that we have bills and rent to pay,” said Moreno, who turned to street vending after losing his job.

Selling on the street is hard work and a tough way to make money and no one is getting rich doing it, say street vendors.

“Sometimes we make about $60-$70 [a day], but sometimes we go back home without a dollar in our pocket,” said Lina Rangel, who sells her food at MacArthur Park in the Westlake area of Los Angeles. “But we keep trying.”

According to Rangel, the police constantly take away the food and wares they are selling and just throw them away. “They throw liquids, like champurrado (a hot chocolate type drink) down the drain,” she said in frustration. “They hit our carts with their batons and we can’t say anything or we get arrested.”

“Unfortunately, it is a perception that street vendors take away businesses from store fronts,” Isela C. Gracian, Vice President of Operations with the East Los Angeles Community Corporation told EGP. “We have been working with different store front businesses and they see the value of working with street vendors to attract more clientele to their neighborhood,” said Gracian, hopeful the committee will get its answers and move forward soon on approving a permitting process.

According to a research study by the Economic Roundtable, street vendors create and support an estimated 5,234 full-time jobs. Food vendors alone “create 1,896 jobs,” the study found.